ears before US Commerce Secretary Gary Locke was nominated as the next US ambassador to China, he made the first of a series of official visits to the country of his father’s birth, after his election in Washington state as America’s first Chinese-American governor.
“He was a rock star. He was treated very much as a head of state there. People in supermarkets came up to him and recognised him,” said Roger Nyhus, Locke’s former communications director.When Chinese President Hu Jintao made his first state visit to the US in 2006 to meet with former President George W Bush, he stopped first in Seattle for a tour at Boeing Co. and dinner at the home of Microsoft founder Bill Gates in a visit coordinated, at the request of the Chinese government, by Locke.There was a payoff. The Starbucks store Locke helped open in Guangzhou was part of what became a doubling of Washington state exports to China to more than $5 billion a year.Locke aggressively talked up Boeing jets, argued for intellectual property protections for Microsoft software, praised the taste of double-shot lattes, played up the healthfulness of Washington state potatoes and pushed, on the US side, for wider freedoms in exporting high-tech equipment to China.President Barack Obama named him Wednesday to succeed former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman in Beijing, calling the relationship with China “one of the most critical of the 21st century.”Locke, a 61-year-old lawyer by training, comes to what is arguably America’s most crucial foreign diplomatic posting. Many caution that he has little experience in some of the stiffest dilemmas the US faces in its dealings with China: how to manage an increasingly assertive China in talks over North Korea, Iran and possibly now Libya; balancing escalating oil imports and attempts to limit greenhouse gases; ongoing concerns over human rights in China; fractious discord over valuation of China’s currency. While most analysts reckon Locke’s confirmation will be a shoo-in, Republican lawmakers have suggested they may use the occasion to criticise the Obama administration’s China policies. Critics in both parties have complained about the administration’s soft hand in addressing China’s undervalued currency, which many see as a big culprit in the huge US trade deficit with China.“There are a lot of reasons we could imagine that he’s not going to sail through as he did with his nomination as commerce secretary,” said David M Bachman, political science professor and former China studies chair at the University of Washington.Locke was the son of an immigrant Chinese grocer, spending his early childhood in an ethnically mixed housing project in Seattle.“It is little over a century that my grandfather first came to America to work as a houseboy for a family in Washington state in exchange for English lessons,” Locke said Wednesday. “I’m going back to the birthplace of my grandfather and father, and I’ll be doing so as a devoted and passionate advocate for America.”Locke graduated from Yale University in 1972 and earned his law degree from Boston University three years later. His career in politics began with his election to the Washington state House of Representatives in 1982, where for five years he chaired the appropriations committee and earned an enduring reputation as a technocrat who reveled in the policy details of running government.Locke went on to become King County executive in 1993 and governor in 1996. Locke presided as governor over some of the Oz-like years of the dot-com boom, when the stunning growth of Microsoft, Real Networks and Amazon.com left urban Washington awash in cash, but also had to oversee years of heavy cuts in public spending that disillusioned some liberal supporters.Locke as commerce secretary has worked to successfully forge new opportunities for US companies, said business leaders, who were generally positive about Wednesday’s nomination. “Over the long run, innovation, economic growth and diplomatic harmony are most effectively achieved by free and fair trade and open dialogue,” said Muhar Kent, CEO of the Coca-Cola Co. and chairman of the US-China Business Council. Dave Cote, the Honeywell CEO who has worked with the administration to open Chinese markets, said, “Locke’s experience in working through tough issues at Commerce and as governor of Washington make him uniquely qualified for this role.”
“He was a rock star. He was treated very much as a head of state there. People in supermarkets came up to him and recognised him,” said Roger Nyhus, Locke’s former communications director.When Chinese President Hu Jintao made his first state visit to the US in 2006 to meet with former President George W Bush, he stopped first in Seattle for a tour at Boeing Co. and dinner at the home of Microsoft founder Bill Gates in a visit coordinated, at the request of the Chinese government, by Locke.There was a payoff. The Starbucks store Locke helped open in Guangzhou was part of what became a doubling of Washington state exports to China to more than $5 billion a year.Locke aggressively talked up Boeing jets, argued for intellectual property protections for Microsoft software, praised the taste of double-shot lattes, played up the healthfulness of Washington state potatoes and pushed, on the US side, for wider freedoms in exporting high-tech equipment to China.President Barack Obama named him Wednesday to succeed former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman in Beijing, calling the relationship with China “one of the most critical of the 21st century.”Locke, a 61-year-old lawyer by training, comes to what is arguably America’s most crucial foreign diplomatic posting. Many caution that he has little experience in some of the stiffest dilemmas the US faces in its dealings with China: how to manage an increasingly assertive China in talks over North Korea, Iran and possibly now Libya; balancing escalating oil imports and attempts to limit greenhouse gases; ongoing concerns over human rights in China; fractious discord over valuation of China’s currency. While most analysts reckon Locke’s confirmation will be a shoo-in, Republican lawmakers have suggested they may use the occasion to criticise the Obama administration’s China policies. Critics in both parties have complained about the administration’s soft hand in addressing China’s undervalued currency, which many see as a big culprit in the huge US trade deficit with China.“There are a lot of reasons we could imagine that he’s not going to sail through as he did with his nomination as commerce secretary,” said David M Bachman, political science professor and former China studies chair at the University of Washington.Locke was the son of an immigrant Chinese grocer, spending his early childhood in an ethnically mixed housing project in Seattle.“It is little over a century that my grandfather first came to America to work as a houseboy for a family in Washington state in exchange for English lessons,” Locke said Wednesday. “I’m going back to the birthplace of my grandfather and father, and I’ll be doing so as a devoted and passionate advocate for America.”Locke graduated from Yale University in 1972 and earned his law degree from Boston University three years later. His career in politics began with his election to the Washington state House of Representatives in 1982, where for five years he chaired the appropriations committee and earned an enduring reputation as a technocrat who reveled in the policy details of running government.Locke went on to become King County executive in 1993 and governor in 1996. Locke presided as governor over some of the Oz-like years of the dot-com boom, when the stunning growth of Microsoft, Real Networks and Amazon.com left urban Washington awash in cash, but also had to oversee years of heavy cuts in public spending that disillusioned some liberal supporters.Locke as commerce secretary has worked to successfully forge new opportunities for US companies, said business leaders, who were generally positive about Wednesday’s nomination. “Over the long run, innovation, economic growth and diplomatic harmony are most effectively achieved by free and fair trade and open dialogue,” said Muhar Kent, CEO of the Coca-Cola Co. and chairman of the US-China Business Council. Dave Cote, the Honeywell CEO who has worked with the administration to open Chinese markets, said, “Locke’s experience in working through tough issues at Commerce and as governor of Washington make him uniquely qualified for this role.”
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